What to Expect From a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Ceremony With No Live Performances

How the Hall of Fame plans to cope with pandemic restrictions

The Doobie Brothers
The Doobie Brothers will join the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year. (Photo by Donald Kravitz/Getty Images)
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When Nine Inch Nails, The Doobie Brothers, Depeche Mode, Whitney Houston, The Notorious B.I.G. and T. Rex get inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on Saturday (Nov. 7), the ceremony will look drastically different than in years past, thanks to COVID-19.

As Billboard reports, because live performances aren’t feasible at this year’s event, the show will instead feature longer clip packages about each artist that will run 10 minutes each instead of the usual two or three and include more archival footage and new interviews.

“That’s something we’ve always liked to do,” Rock and Roll Hall of Fame president Joel Peresman told the publication. “Part of our mission as an institution is to really teach people why these artists are important and why they got inducted. It ties in almost closer to what we do at the museum in Cleveland [than our usual format].”

Peresman also raised the possibility of a spinoff show focused on the longer highlights packages in later years when things return to normal and live performances return.

“[Once the pandemic is over], the plan is to go back to the format that we had [with shorter clip packages, plus an introduction, acceptance speech and performance by each honoree],” he said. “What would be great is if we could create an additional program that could go a little deeper and tell some of these stories about the artists. If we could create some additional programming that we could run with our media partner [HBO] that goes a little deeper and tells the stories about these artists, that would be ideal.”

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